Gideon Carter, who represents the families that originally sued to integrate the schools, said on Monday that he will file for an extension before a 5 p.m. deadline Thursday. U.S. District Judge Kurt Engelhardt said in a June 10 order that he will hold a hearing on July 20 for any motions filed by the deadline.

"My pleading will ask that the consent order, in whole or in part, be extended," Carter said, referring to the 2008 plan to reform school policies that distributed resources inequitably.

Carter declined to specify what issues he will raise in asking for the extension until he formally submits the request.

Meanwhile, Charles Patin, lawyer for the Jefferson Parish School Board, said he is waiting and watching.

"I don't have any expectation one way or the other right now," Patin said Monday.

The Dandridge desegregation case produced a 1971 court order for the schools to end institutionalized racial discrimination, but federal court has yet to declare that Jefferson achieved racial balance in its public schools.

The school system's effort to win a court designation of "unitary" status and free itself from federal oversight began after School Board member Ellen Kovach proposed ending busing of students across attendance district lines in 2006.

The proposal by Kovach, now a judge in 24th Judicial District Court in Gretna, collapsed in a firestorm of controversy over concerns that her plan would worsen racial inequities in the schools, but the revisiting of Dandridge that followed produced sweeping changes beyond the realm of busing.

In the 2008 consent order, the schools agreed to overhaul policies that led to an uneven allocation of services. Attendance zones changed, a permissive practice of granting student transfers out of their zones ended, thousands of students moved to different schools, teachers changed schools, longstanding practices for spending construction and maintenance money changed and an array of new magnet schools and advanced academies opened, partly with the goal of drawing together students of different racial backgrounds.